The full moon rose above the forest, bright and round and beautiful. David stared at it from the top of the tree he had picked, as high up as he had dared to climb. Alvin’s ghost had followed him up, which looked ridiculous as the gangly young wolf perched on a branch, but it also meant David had the tree to himself. Nobody had wanted to share with him and the ghost, even though Pettau and deBurg had shared a cage with the spirit for days. Maybe it was because the ghost looked almost solid in the full moon light. Like a statue made of quicksilver.

The apparition behaved nothing like David would have expected a werewolf to behave on full moon night. It bounded from branch to branch, playful rather than aggressive, if restless. There was clearly a limit to how far it could move away from him.

There was still no sign that it understood him, that there was any part of Alvin-the-boy left. David still talked to him all night, since there was little else to do while they waited for the moon to set.

His arm itched faintly, like an old mosquito bite. Or maybe that was just in his head because he kept waiting for the silver lines on his skin to do something—anything. But maybe their only effect was to anchor the ghost to him.

He very much tried not to think about what was happening to the material werewolves down on the ground—Rust and Ragna most of all. They couldn’t afford to lose their elders, but there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop them from running straight into the Valoisian guns. And silver bullets or not, they couldn’t heal themselves tonight.

He tried to doze, but kept waking up. Sometimes, it was the faint echo of gunfire wafting up in the breeze, but mostly, he woke from the howling and barking of the wolves that kept chasing through the camp, yapping at the soldiers covering in the trees. David could only hope that the abundance of potential prey would keep most of the werewolves in the small forest, keeping them safe from the Valoisian guns—and the surrounding villages save from the werewolves.

Not that there should be too many people left in those villages.

David didn’t see Ragna or Rust until they limped into camp the next morning, well after most soldiers had dared to get back to the ground. Both of them were covered in blood. Ragna was still bleeding, a steady trickle from a wound in her back.

Silver, as she confirmed amidst a string of profanity, but not enough to stop her from turning human. Enough to kill her in a day or three, if it wasn’t removed.

Luckily, the werewolves had saved enough surgeons to find one who was willing to dig the slug out from between her ribs. Even though she transformed into the giant wolf as soon as the procedure started.

The doctor cursed and froze as Ragna whimpered and threw her head left and right. Then he stopped abruptly, to admire the way his new cuts had completely healed, leaving only the rough edges of the injury the silver bullet had ripped into Ragna’s flank. David had to remind him of his job before he continued his work.

At least he didn’t seem stumped by the way the wound and muscles and bones had shifted in Ragna’s transformation.

The elder whined, a sound that stopped abruptly and came back as a groan as soon as the bullet dropped into the moss. The surgeon wrapped her in some makeshift bandages, and managed not to stare at her naked chest. David offered her his uniform jacket, which she took gratefully.

“Any chance of some food?” she asked.

“Some,” David said. “Not much, I’m afraid.”

DeVale’s men had scoured the surrounding villages for food, requisitioning everything the farmers didn’t hide fast enough, but after a week, there was little left. Another reason why the army would have to move, soon as full moon was over.

David passed Ragna some of the dried bread of his own ration, while deVale sent some of his men out again as the sun climbed higher—not just to resupply, also to warn the farmers, to tell them to evacuate. Those that hadn’t fled on their own.

The werewolves rested, while the human soldiers prepared to march north, straight towards Deva, as soon as the sun rose tomorrow.

David, in the meantime, borrowed one of the few remaining horses to go see how the Valoise had fared during the night.

He took some time picking one from the very limited numbers of animals the Loegrian army had left. Boris trailed after him in his wolf-shape, claiming that he couldn’t sleep, anyway. Which was helpful to test the horses’ reaction.

Eventually, David settled on a dark brown gelding that eyed the huge wolf with interest but little fear. When David climbed into the saddle, deVale and deBurg brought their own mounts over. It was probably foolish of the three of them to ride together, even with the small entourage that was going to follow them. David didn’t feel like arguing with the other two lords, though.

They didn’t take the direct way back towards the enemy, swinging further inland, to hopefully fool any enemy outriders. It also meant doubling the distance—which still wasn’t bad now that it was light. They rode southwest until they reached a road and and let the horses trot towards Port Neaf. There was a breeze coming in from the sea, and seagulls cried overhead. The sun was quite strong, though, making David wish he could jump into the waves, uniform and all.

At least it didn’t look like they would have to worry about the weather any time soon.

DeVale had clearly been thinking in a similar direction. “You won’t even have a tent,” he pointed out. “Are you sure about this plan?”

No, David wanted to say. Riding through the early summer landscape made the enormity of what he was planning dawn on him. This were the heartlands. The road was lined with lush green pastures, and in the distance, he saw fields where the winter barley was awaiting the harvest.

And he was planning to destroy it all.

Such was war. If he didn’t do it, the Valoise surely would. And they wouldn’t stop when they got to the river.

“You could leave it to the werewolves,” deVale added when David didn’t say anything.

David thought of Fenn, faithfully guarding the White Torrent’s wellspring, of Bernadette, burned at the stake. Of Ragna, shot with silver. She hadn’t asked to return to Deva until the wound was healed.

“Someone has to do it,” he said.

“Rather you than me,” deBurg grumbled. “Though I reckon neither of us has an easy road ahead.”

DeVale threw the older Lord a glance that said fairly clearly he thought deBurg had the easiest road ahead—which David thought might be true. But aloud, the count asked: “What would you do if the palace surrenders before I get there?”

David shuddered at the thought. He really hoped Lane would prevent that. “It wouldn’t change much,” he said aloud. “Capitulation or not, if the Valoise can’t get their army to Deva, they’ll never control more than the southern coast.”

DeVale mulled that over. “It might make you an outcast.”

David laughed about that. “You think setting the heartlands on fire won’t? Hells, if Duke Stuard lives, I wouldn’t be surprised if he exiles me for what I’m going to do.”

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He shouldn’t have said that. Suddenly, he had both deVale’s and deBurg’s full attention.

“Whatever did happen between the two of you?” deBurg asked.

David sighed. “I was friends with Clarence d’Averc and Lester Villeroy. I don’t know if you remember them. They were stoned for blasphemy about, oh, twelve years ago now. Duke George Louis himself handed their scripts over to the church. I used to think he’d turn me over, too.”

“Playwrights, weren’t they?” deBurg said slowly. “I do remember them.”

David nodded.

“Wait—you mean the two fools who shared their sartire about the Roi Solei with like a dozen other young nobles?” deVale grunted. “They invited me, too. I went once and fell out the door backwards. They must have had a deathwish.”

“I guess so,” David said softly.

He was surprised to realise that it barely hurt anymore.

“You were a member of their little club?” deVale asked.

“For a time, yes,” David lied. It was easier than explaining why exactly he feared George Louis might turn him over to the inquisition.

“An interesting hobby, for a werewolf hunter,” deBurg noted.

Thankfully, the landscape changed around them at those words, so David didn’t need to answer. They entered a small copse of trees, and David rubbed his head. He glanced at Boris, who had trotted after them without comment. Treesap and something else was in the air.

The trees thinned abruptly—half the little forest had been clear-felled, probably to produce wood for the palisades the Valoise had pulled up. The ground beyond was trampled by hundreds of boots, killing the grass there and leaving behind a mudflat.

“I wonder if they salted this,” deVale said. “I’d have expected the Rot to rise from this?”

Salt. Or some other kind of alchemy, Boris confirmed, wrinkling his nose.

With the trees cut down, it was a lot harder to get within visual range of the camp without being spotted themselves. They had to leave the horses behind and follow below the ridge of the hill, ducking low. DeVale, luckily, had his long glass still, so they didn’t need to get too close. Once they spotted the palisades in the distance, they robbed the rest of the way forwards on their bellies, barely raising their heads above the mud.

DeBurg swore softly next to David, muttering something about how his people wouldn’t even recognize him when he got home. “I suppose you’re used to this,” he finished, glaring at David, as if any of this was his fault.

David didn’t say anything. On the one hand, he was, yes, but crawling through the mud would never be his idea of a good time no matter how often he did it.

“See the smoke?” deVale asked.

A dark grey plume was rising from a mound outside the camp. David didn’t need a long glass to guess what it was.

“Burning their dead?” he asked. “Let me guess: werewolves?”

“Bodies for sure,” deVale confirmed. “What makes you think they’re werewolves?”

“The fire is outside the camp. They want us to see this. They wouldn’t want us to know their casualty numbers for their regular soldiers.”

“Sound reasoning,” deBurg muttered.

“Well, they look human enough from here,” deVale said. “And it’s a lot of bodies. I don’t remember the werewolf captains sending quite this many to their deaths.”

“Must be the soldiers that got bitten during the fighting,” David said grimly. “Took them long enough to figure out how to test them. I wonder if they found them all.”

They probably had, he thought. The incentive to be thorough was very strong, after all. And they probably had the silver to spare, too.

“How many bodies do you reckon are there?” David asked.

“Hard to say with all the wood stacked in between,” deVale said slowly, “but I think I do see a wolf in the pile. Here,” he added, handing over the long glass. “See for yourself.”

David fumbled around with the glass for a bit, trying to get a clearer image. There was indeed a pile of bodies piled up outside the camp, in the process of being burned. Maybe that was were all the wood had gone? It certainly wasn’t burning well. The smoke was dark grey and he saw barely any flames, even when he got the spyglass adjusted right.

He did think he saw shaggy black and grey fur, but there was no way of telling if it was a werewolf he knew or a stranger.

Dominoes.

There weren’t nearly as many dead bodies as he would have hoped, but still, losing men like that had to be poison for morale. How many unsettled werewolves had Ragna and Rust sacrificed? Three volunteers and a handful more to back them up? So a dozen at most. Whereas the Valoise had lost, what, a hundred? Maybe as many as two hundred men?

If only they had enough werewolves to do it again, over and over.

Fifteen to one, deVale had said. If only all their men were werewolves…

David shuddered. Even then, they would lose. They had caught the pisscoats by surprise once. It wouldn’t happen that way again.

“They’ve fixed the walls and the gates,” he noted, turning the spyglass away from the gruesome pile of bodies. He swung it further away. “More sails out at sea, too.”

“A bit early for reinforcements,” deVale noted. “Must be supplies.”

“You sure you want to stay behind and fight that?” deBurg asked. Again. “You could just go back to Deva. Take the werewolves, too. I’ll take more than ten, too, truth be told. We conscript more forces of our own, look for volunteers or just chose more werewolves. Face the Valoise with a city at our back.”

David shook his head. “We can’t. You know we can’t. We’d struggle to raise an army half as large as theirs, and it still would be soldiers green as grass.”

He handed the spyglass back. “No. It has to be this way. And one of us has to be here.”

And it had to be him.

“If the people insist on calling me Lord Relentless, I should better show them what that name actually means.”

They robbed backwards, curiosity satisfied. Well, mostly.

“Shame we can’t get a look into the camp itself,” David sighed as he straightened up, savely behind the ridge. “I’d like to know what the morale is like at this point.”

“I doubt it changed much,” deBurg said. “An army this big? And they know we’ve wasted our best shot when we failed to stop them from taking the harbour.”

David shuddered as he tried to get some of the mud off his clothes. “I wish I had my leather gear,” he grumbled. At least that would have been easier to clean.

He’d have to steal some farmer’s clothes, soon as they got moving. Something sturdier than the uniform. But first…

“What are you doing?” deVale asked, as David swung the crossbow off his back.

David ignored him, staring up towards the birds that were riding on the breeze, sea gulls and crows, drawn in by the carnage just out of sight. He shot first one, then a second one.

“Mithras,” deVale cursed when one of them came down just a few yards away.

David picked them both up and quickly cut their throats. Then he removed the bolts for future use and held them upside down, shaking them a little to spread the blood onto the ground as far as he could.

“What are you doing?” deVale asked, now with a hint of panic in his voice.

“I want to see how good their alchemy is. Boris, stand back a little, will you?”

“Are you mad, man?” deBurg snapped, jumping back as the giant wolf retreated.

David smiled grimly, levering two more bolts into position, and aiming upwards again. “If nothing else, they’ll make for good eating,” he said, and took down two more.

Don’t spread it out so far, Boris said. Let it gather.

“Right you are,” David said, and held these two carcasses together over one of the indentations his boots had made in the ground. There wasn’t a lot of blood in two birds, but if formed just the faintest puddle.

That’s more like it. Smell that? Boris asked.

There was a faint wiff in the air, but nothing more.

We should go, Boris added. You carry too much silver, and I’m not exactly weak tea, either.

“You think this is enough?” David asked.

I think that’s the most you’ll get out of a few birds. Unless you want to stand around and shoot a whole flock down. We can come back if we find a deer. Boris shook himself and added: Might not have to, though.

He was right, wasn’t he? There was something stirring at the bottom of the puddle. David shuddered and stepped back as Boris had said.

As deBurg and deVale hurried ahead, David kept glancing over his shoulder. It wasn’t until they reached the horses and climbed back into the saddle that there was movement. Or was it movement? Or just a flickering of light in the air? Something he wanted to see?

You did it, boss, Boris commented. His not-voice sounded dry to David. Congratulations. Now let’s get out of here.